


if this love is pain, then honey let's love tonight

by 152glasslippers



Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Canon Compliant through s1ep10, Canon Divergent, David calls Frank out on his bullshit, F/M, Frank gets hurt and Karen won't leave him, Future Fic, POV Multiple, love realizations all around
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-03
Updated: 2018-04-03
Packaged: 2019-04-18 03:13:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14203803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/152glasslippers/pseuds/152glasslippers
Summary: David raised his eyebrows. “You really think she’s been sitting here, crying over your unconscious body for a day and a half because she thinks she’s better off without you?”“She doesn’t need to be doing all that,” he grumbled.“Of course she doesn’t. Nobody ever needs to. I don’t need to watch my family all day, every day; I know they’ll be fine. But I can’t do anything else, so I watch them.” David’s eyes were so intent on his, it was almost painful. “Because I love them.”Canon divergent/future AU. David and Frank are still working together underground. After Frank is badly injured in a mission gone wrong, David and Karen rush Frank back to the basement/bunker, and Karen’s insistence on staying at his bedside forces some emotional revelations.





	if this love is pain, then honey let's love tonight

**Author's Note:**

> I really didn’t expect David and Frank to be free by the end of the season 1, and assuming we’d have multiple seasons of the two of them hiding out in their bunker, this is the kind of scene I was dying for. (Once you realize you won’t get it in canon, what other choice do you have but to write it yourself?)

**_David_ **

True to his word, Frank only ever said it once, and true to their unspoken agreement, David never asked again.

 _So is Karen_.

He watched her now, in the chair next to Frank’s bed, where she’d been sitting for the last fourteen hours. After hour eight, when it had become clear she wasn’t leaving and she wouldn’t sleep, David had stolen a few hours and woken up to find her in the exact same spot, looking as if she’d barely moved a muscle. He’d made them some food and she’d taken all of six bites, her eyes trained on Frank from where they stood in the kitchen.

It was the worst he’d ever seen him, the worst of all the times he’d had to call Curtis to put Frank back together, which was saying something. Karen was with Frank when he found him; she’d been the one to fish Frank’s burner out of his pocket and call Curtis. It hadn’t been a choice, really, to bring her back here. The look in Karen’s eyes—like she’d put him down if he tried to take Frank away from her—had answered that question pretty quickly.

As it turned out, they’d needed all the hands they could get.

Frank had come to while Curtis was digging a bullet out of his side, head thrashing, eyes darting, fingers curling into fists. Karen hadn’t even hesitated. Tore off her gloves and moved to the head of the table, taking Frank’s face in both hands. She’d turned him toward her, her voice clear and confident.

“Frank.” Louder. “Frank.”

Frank’s eyes locked on Karen’s and his body went still so abruptly, David had worried something else had gone wrong. But Karen was holding him, saying, “We’re safe. You’re fine.” And he’d watched as Frank’s chest steadied with his breathing, the panic bleeding out from behind his eyes until they turned soft, a softness David had never been entirely sure still existed within Frank, a vulnerability that made him look away.

Frank had passed out again less than a minute later, and Karen had just laid his head back down on the table and reached for another pair of gloves. No one had said a word.

David was leaning against the doorway into Frank’s room, arms crossed against his chest. He wasn’t as quiet as Frank, had never mastered that skill. She had to know he was there.

“You love him, don’t you?”

Karen turned to him, her eyes red around the edges, a bruise starting to show around her right temple that he knew Frank wouldn’t like. Tears built along her lashes, spilled over one at a time, silently tracking down her cheeks while she looked at him. She didn’t brush them away. There was really no point in hiding them, he guessed, since he’d already heard her crying, but it seemed like something more than that.

In the countless hours trapped in the basement behind his computers, David had spent more time than he wanted to admit trying to imagine the kind of woman who might love Frank. _Maria was a special woman_ , he had said, and she sounded like a real ball buster, more than a match for Frank. But the Frank David knew—his partner, his friend—was a different man than the one Maria married. And he had a feeling that Maria, rest her soul, wouldn’t have known what to do with him.

Of course, she never would have had to. With Maria alive, this Frank would never have existed.

But Maria was gone, and Frank was so many things, but he was also the Punisher, and so it begged the question—what woman could love Frank? Could handle being with him and everything that came with it?

The tears on Karen’s face weren’t there because she was resigned to David seeing them. They weren’t a refusal to be embarrassed by her emotions or even a challenge for David to face them. They just _were_. Because Karen Page didn’t shrink. Not for anyone. Not from anything.

Neither did Frank.

Again, Karen didn’t say a word. Just looked at him for a long minute, unblinking, and then turned back to Frank.

And David had an answer to both questions.

 

**_Frank_ **

The first time Frank woke up, David was staring at him from the recliner across the room and Karen was asleep, her long body folded precariously into the chair next to him. She was hunched over, head resting on her hands, arms folded over the arm of the chair, legs tucked underneath her. Her hair fell freely over her shoulder. He studied her for a minute, careful to keep his face blank, aware of David’s eyes on him.

“How long’s she been like that?” His throat felt raw.

“In the chair? Since we put you in the bed.”

“How long have I been out?”

David’s eyes shifted to one of the clocks near his computers. “A little over 27 hours.”

Frank tried to temper his reaction, keep his voice somewhere near calm so he didn’t wake Karen. “And she’s been in that chair the whole damn time?”

“She went to the bathroom a couple of times.”

“Shit, did she even eat?”

“A little bit.”

Frank shook his head, breathing deeply through his nose. Curt would kill him if he knew he was letting his blood pressure get this high so soon after he’d been stitched together. He looked down at the bandages covering his arms, his stomach. The pain didn’t even register.

“It’s not my fault, man. It’s not like I tied her to the chair and told her she couldn’t leave.”

Frank pushed himself up a bit and looked back over at Karen. She’d slipped her shoes off in front of her chair. Her blouse was stained with his blood, and probably her skirt, too. The fabric was too dark to tell.

“She cares about you, Frank.”

“Yeah, well, probably be better if she didn’t.” No probably about it. She didn’t need to be dragged into any more of his fights. They’d already spent too much time together running and fighting, covered in each other’s blood.

“Better for who? For you? Cause sometimes I think she’s the only thing keeping you sane.” A grim, resigned look took over David’s face. “It sure as hell isn’t me.”

Frank grunted and shifted in bed, barely resisting the urge to roll his eyes. He hated when David was right.

Because that was the reason he couldn’t stay away, wasn’t it? The reason he’d taken a bullet for her, the reason he’d planted himself in the path of anyone and everyone who’d tried to hurt her. And the reason he’d keep doing it.

No matter how much time passed, every day since he’d woken up and learned his family was dead felt unreal. Half lived, and half spent wondering how any of it was actually happening. But Karen. She was real. Her smiles and her stories, her anger and her stubbornness. The way her hair caught the light and her skin flushed; the way she watched him with soft eyes and then called him on his bullshit. Her 0.38 and her damn mouth. Her tears. They were real.

And when he was with her, so was he.

But Frank never gave in to a fight with David that easily, so he said, “Better for her then.”

David raised his eyebrows. “You really think she’s been sitting here, crying over your unconscious body for a day and a half because she thinks she’s better off without you?”

“She doesn’t need to be doing all that,” he grumbled.

“Of course she doesn’t. Nobody ever needs to. I don’t _need_ to watch my family all day, every day; I know they’ll be fine. But I can’t do anything else, so I watch them.” David’s eyes were so intent on his, it was almost painful. “Because I love them.”

They stared at each other for a minute, and then David stood up from the recliner and moved toward the door.

“She loves you, Frank. Don’t be an asshole about it.”

Frank sighed, sinking back down against the mattress. He stared at the ceiling, listening to David tinkering in the kitchen, and beneath that, the barely there sound of Karen breathing. He rolled his head against the pillow to look at her.

She’d be sore when she woke up, that was for sure. But she’d also never complain about it. Not once.

He could feel the ghost of her fingertips pressing against his skin, his wounds. Her hands were warm; her whole body was warm, wrapped around his, keeping him together in the back of David’s car. And she hadn’t left. If he was honest with himself, he hadn’t expected her to. She was never the one who left.

And if he ignored every ounce of fear and paranoia, every traumatized instinct screaming at him about what happened when people got too close, he knew he didn’t want her to. He didn’t want her to leave any more than he wanted to stay away from her. He was sick of always saying goodbye. Of the guilt and the relief when it didn’t stick.

Which only meant one thing. The thing he never thought he’d feel again, the thing he’d been denying for a very long time.

_Shit._

 

**_Karen_ **

There were days Karen walked into the Bulletin’s archives in the morning and lost herself in the stacks until it was dark outside. Days where she never left her desk, only remembering to eat because Ellison dropped a sandwich on her stack of files. Whole chunks of time where she was never restless and she was never tired—until she was already falling asleep on her computer.

It wasn’t obsession; it was focus.

She hadn’t changed her clothes, hadn’t showered or brushed her hair, hadn’t eaten more than half a plate of pasta, hadn’t slept more than four hours in the last day and a half, but she was focused.

David told her Frank had been awake for maybe ten minutes during the few hours she’d fallen asleep in her chair, and the relief had hit her like a wave: bracing, but cold. If he’d regained consciousness, he was through the worst of it, but she’d missed it. It’d been over 36 hours since she’d seen Frank’s eyes open.

Maybe it was a little bit obsession.

David was asleep in whatever corner of the basement passed as his room. Karen was alone again. And the three feet between her chair and Frank’s bed were killing her.

She wanted to reach out and touch him. Wanted to hold his hand. She wanted to climb into bed with him, pull his head into her lap and push her fingers through his hair, let her nails graze against his scalp. She wanted to lie down next to him, fold herself around him, rest her forehead against his and protect him from his dreams, or fall asleep herself and meet him there.

But she didn’t think she had the right.

She’d accepted a long time ago that a part of her belonged to him, the same part that thought of him as hers, but that was only in her mind.

All the cups of coffee, the flowers and the clandestine meetings, the life saving and the near-death misses, and they still hadn’t crossed that line. She wasn’t sure Frank wanted to. And if he did, she’d never assume he was ready.

But they couldn’t stay away from each other. And nothing in the world could move her from that chair.

For Frank, Karen could be very good at waiting.

Exactly 38 hours and 42 minutes after he’d passed out while she held his face in her hands, Frank opened his eyes and looked at her.

For a minute—or maybe a second or maybe an hour—neither of them said anything. In the back of her mind, Karen pictured what the same scene might look like unfolding at bedsides all over the world. Exclaimed greetings and happy tears, loud and joyous reunions.

But she and Frank had never needed that many words.

It was his hospital room, the diner, her apartment, the hotel kitchen and the hotel elevator, all over again. They spent so much of their time just watching each other.

“What day is it?” he finally asked.

“Thursday.”

He nodded like this was in line with what he was expecting. “Where does Ellison think you are?”

She shrugged. “Wherever. He’s thrilled I’m taking a personal day.”

Frank pushed himself up in bed, wincing slightly, one hand coming up to hold the bandage on his side. She leaned forward in her chair, on instinct, but he managed to get himself into a sitting position. He let his head fall against the wall behind him. He looked at her again, serious, intense.

“You okay?”

She nodded. She was, really, but the question was still enough to bring tears to her eyes. After another second of staring, she couldn’t take it.

“I’ll go get your meds,” she said and stood up, escaping to the kitchen.

She pulled a glass from one of the cabinets, closed her eyes and covered her mouth against a sob. Took a deep breath as she turned the faucet on. By the time she walked back into Frank’s room, glass of water in one hand, handful of pills in the other, her eyes were clear.

She stood next to his bed, handed him the glass and the pills, watched him take them. Took the glass back from him, set it on the nightstand. She was half-turned back to her chair when his hand found hers. He tugged gently, and she dropped onto the bed next to him, perched in the space between his waist and the edge of the mattress. Their hands landed in her lap, both of hers surrounding his.

She kept her eyes on his as the backs of his fingers trailed the length of her hair, pushing it over her shoulder. His thumb stroked her cheek, his palm warm against her neck, his fingers curling behind her ear.

“Karen…” He still said her name like it was a precious thing, a privilege to be able to use it.

They were coming dangerously close to that line, but she could see in Frank’s eyes that he wasn’t going to walk them back from it.

“I’m scared,” he started, and she tightened her grip on the hand in her lap. “I’m scared that if we do this…” He trailed off, hesitating. His eyes dropped to her mouth.

“That you’ll lose me?”

Frank scoffed. “I’m scared of that even if we don’t.”

“Then what?”

His eyes found hers again. “That it’ll hurt you.”

She let out a laugh, a small huff of air, before she could help it. “Frank…” She leaned into his hand. “What did you tell me once about the ones who can hurt you?”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

“I can’t…” His hand trembled against her cheek. “I can’t promise that we won’t be here again. Or worse.”

She shook her head and reached for the hand at her neck, brought it down to her lap, her fingers squeezing his. “You just have to promise that you’ll always try to come back.”

Frank nodded, and the look on his face was so somber, so sincere, she felt the tears forming behind her eyes again. She leaned forward and he met her in the middle, and when their foreheads touched, she felt the tension leave her body for the first time in days.

“Stay.” It wasn’t even a whisper, just a breath on her skin.

“Does it look like I’m going anywhere?”

“You don’t have to sit in that chair.”

“Frank.” She pulled back just enough to look him in the eye. There was a grin lifting the corners of his mouth, something small and playful in his eyes. She pursed her lips to hide her answering smile and tried to force a stern note into her voice. “You need to sleep.”

“I’ve been sleeping.” The playfulness grew and then melted away, leaving behind something tender and unguarded. “I just want to be close to you.”

Her heart beat a little harder. She could feel her pulse in her fingertips.

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

It took some maneuvering—Frank had too many stitches he couldn’t put pressure on—but they finally managed to fit together on the bed, Frank on his good side and Karen facing him, their bodies lining up, mirror images pressed against each other in the narrow space. His face was less than an inch from hers. It was the intimacy of every one of their shared looks magnified by a thousand.

The world felt very small, just her and Frank and their bed, their breaths mingling in the space between them.

His gaze landed on the collar of her shirt, his fingers coming up to play with the edge of the fabric.

“This is ruined.”

“It’s just a shirt, Frank. Small price to pay to have you alive.”

He didn’t say anything, just kept rubbing the fabric between his thumb and his forefinger. She wanted to stay awake, keep her eyes on him, bask in the comfort, the peace, the thrill of being this close to him, but he was warm, and the exhaustion was beginning to creep back up on her. She felt her eyes drift shut against her will.

“I might fall asleep on you,” she murmured.

Frank moved his hand from her collar to her waist, and she curled into it, shifting her body even further into his.

“That’s alright.”

“Be alive when I wake up, okay?” She was too close to sleep to keep the fear to herself.

Frank dropped a kiss to her nose, soft and sweet, there and then gone, lighter even than that day at the river.

“Yes, ma’am.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
